If you’re looking A/B testing ideas, this is the list you should start with.
The average landing page conversion rate is 2.35%. If your conversions fall into this range, you’ve got some work to do.
The top companies are converting at around 5% and the best of the best are seeing conversion rates of 11.5% and higher. Those kind of “unicorn” results are indeed possible.
This article will show you how to develop a good CRO strategy by providing you with the top 10 tips used by the most prominent brands worldwide.
10 Tips for Optimizing Your Conversion Rate
Now that you have a better idea of how to create a CRO strategy, here are ten tips to help you make progress towards your conversion rate goals:
1. Make It Easy for Visitors to Fill Out Forms
Website forms are a great way to generate leads and collect email signups.
The easier it is to fill out, the higher your conversion rates will be. Ensure that the fields are clearly labeled with relevant sample text so that visitors know what to type. Don’t forget to make the submit button easy to locate!
2. Add a Site Search
There are many benefits of adding a site search to your website. But the main benefit is so that you can optimize the user experience and achieve more conversions.
When visitors conduct a site search, your company can use that information to understand what people are looking for when they come to your website.
You can use this data to create additional content, learn more about your customers’ needs, and optimize your content accordingly.
3. Incorporate Live Chat Into Your Website
Live chat and chatbots are wonderful tools for customer support, while also lowering overhead costs. Instead of a fully staffed call center, a 24/7 live support chatbot can help more customers at any time of day.
When customers have their questions answered, they are more likely to buy your product. Chatbots also help you build trust with your customers by providing them with the answers they need in real-time.
4. Leverage Better Social Proof
Social proof, such as positive reviews, high product ratings, user-generated content, and viral social media content allows you to spread the word about your brand through the perspective of your loyal customers.
Studies show that 80% of people trust their friend and family recommendations, so leverage social proof highlighting the positives of working with your brand.
5. Provide More Value With a Lead Magnet
Targeted lead magnets are a great way to improve your conversion rates. In general, the more targeted your lead generation and marketing efforts are, the higher your conversion rates will be.
Create free content like PDFs, videos, and eBooks that position your brand to inform and educate customers. This strategy will help build trust and give them something useful in return for their contact information.
6. Optimize Your Content
If your CRO analysis shows that your content is underperforming, you need to optimize your content to reach your target audiences. Keyword optimization, content length, and rich content like images and videos all play a part in improving conversions.
And don’t forget about your social media content, since 53% of consumers discover new brands on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest.
7. Reevaluate Your Customer Personas
Snapshots of your ideal customer are critical tools for generating leads. But the gap between who you think your ideal client is and who they actually are might be bigger than you realize.
And as your brand expands, you’ll notice new audiences becoming loyal fans too. Reevaluating your customer personas frequently can help you align with your customer base and find more high-intent leads.
8. Check Your Website Speed
Website speed can have a big impact on your conversions. In fact, website speed is so important that none of the optimization efforts on this list will make a difference in your conversion rates if your landing pages take too long to load.
If a page does not load immediately, you are at risk of missing out on a conversion.
According to Google, if your website takes longer than 3 seconds to load, your customers are 53% more likely to move on, and it only gets worse from there.
9. Follow Up With Customers
When a customer abandons their cart, it may seem like all is lost. However, abandoned carts are an excellent opportunity to follow up with customers and learn about their experience to improve your website.
Look for other opportunities where “failure” can lead to actionable insights to improve user engagement.
There are many ways to follow up with customers, the most effective way being through triggered and automated email flows. You can also use push notifications, social outreach, and surveys.
10. Don’t Forget About User Testing
Finally, to enhance your CRO efforts, you can’t forget to test your changes and ensure that your optimization efforts meet your customers’ needs.
Without running tests, it’s virtually impossible to realize what your customers like and dislike about your messaging, graphics, and landing pages. You can optimize your web pages to get the most conversions when you know what your customers want.
The Business Case for Conversion Rate Optimization
When you consider how expensive it is to acquire a new customer (up to 25 times more costly than retaining an existing customer), the money-saving benefits are clear.
Successful salespeople know that the secret to increasing conversions is building successful sales and marketing strategies that resonate with your audience.
CRO can help you differentiate between what’s working and what’s not so that you can create the best experience possible for your customers.
Don’t Forget These CRO Best Practices
It’s essential to establish a baseline before implementing any changes to your existing lead generation and marketing efforts.
A baseline will help your team measure the results of any changes you make to your marketing strategies to ensure you use only the most profitable ones.
Just as you assiduously track your finances, so too must you track your website changes.
Then, organize the steps of your lead generation funnel and customer journey, including any landing pages, email messaging, and other ads they might come into contact with.
Next, establish your conversion goals for each landing page and which metrics you want to measure.
The answers to these questions will vary from company to company and industry to industry so that you can personalize your metrics according to your conversion goals and brand values.
Finally, based on what you learned from the previous two steps, you can identify areas of your funnel that you need to optimize to achieve your conversion rate goals.
As a general rule, you want to start with areas that will allow you to see the results of your efforts quickly and have the most significant immediate impact on your conversion rate.
For example, you may want to optimize the part of your funnel that receives the most traffic or generates the most conversions. Or you may want to focus on high-value pages or pages with low performance.
Final Thoughts
Online retail sales have increased over 70% since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, and the growth is showing no signs of slowing down.
Take advantage of this shift to online sales by implementing a conversion rate optimization plan to make the most out of your lead generation and marketing efforts.
Customer behavior and customer analytics tools help businesses gain deep insights about their audiences to make lasting connections and create landing pages and forms that convert. Follow these tips to get your CRO plan started today.